Liya’s third-grade class does a low-tide walk on Puget Sound just south of Carkeek Park. Jan helps chaperone the event, driving Liya and two of her classmates, Greta and Kira, to the beach. The class walks on the exposed beach for an hour or so, poking among the rocks and sand at barnacles, urchins, chitons, and crabs. We eat lunch at a picnic shelter. It’s cold and gray (even for June), but luckily one of the moms coming to drive kids back to the school has brought some firewood, so Jan starts a fire in the park’s firepit. The kids crowds around to finish their lunch and present their teacher, Ms. Lord, with some year-end gifts.
Anya returns from a 4th grade overnight trip to Camp Burton. She had a wonderful time canoeing and doing other outdoor activities, and had fun staying up until midnight with her friends. Now she’s utterly exhausted.
In lieu of reading time, Jan begs the bleary-eyed Anya to go to bed and get some sleep. She insists on staying up. She finally goes to her bedroom, whereupon the exhausted Anya and sleepy Liya begin a shouting match over whether Anya ate any of Liya’s candy. This argument degenerates into a weepy, screaming, hysterical fit that lasts for some 30 minutes. Liya keeps wailing: “But she ate my CANDY. WAAAAH.”
The next morning, both girls are bright-eyed and happy.
Jan: “Isn’t it a lot easier to talk these things over when you’re rested?”
Anya: “Yes! Liya, I’m sorry I ate some of your candy.”
Liya: “That’s okay. I ate one of your butterscotches.”
The girls’ school holds their annual carnival. This year, Anya and Liya focus their attention almost exclusively on the midway games. Both collect far more prize tickets than is actually warranted by the small collection of prizes. Anya discovers that the miniature golf game is easy, and goes back through the line over and over until she has well over a 100 prize tickets. The most expensive prize is only something like 30 tickets.
Sabriya’s Seattle Chinese School holds their year-end graduation program. After two years of Saturday classes at the school, Bree now knows quiet a bit more Mandarin than her older sisters (who did study with a tutor for a while, but never attended classes at the school).
It’s a nice sunny day, perfect for a quick visit to the Japanese Garden.
Jan’s wired up all the various bits of telegraph equipment in his office to create two telegraph stations so he and Anya can test everything out before moving the stations to separate rooms. Tonight we practice sending messages to each other, this time trying to use the telegraph for some of the back-and-forth (“Did you get that?” “No, do it again.”) instead of always falling back to talking. This goes okay, except Anya’s completely preoccupied with a spider on the wall.
Jan: HI
Anya: KILL THE SPIDER
Jan: IGNORE IT
Anya: BUT ITS A SPIDER ITS BEHIND YOU
Jan: HOW COOL
Anya: ITS CREEPY KILL IT
Jan: GN [Good Night]
Anya: BUT ITS A SPIDER
Jan: GN SPIDER
Liya’s Ballet II class participates in the ballet school’s end-of-year performance. They dance to the Allegro first movement of Schubert’s Symphony No. 5. (The photo was taken during the earlier rehearsal. That’s Liya kneeling on the right.)
Father’s Day. We all go to see Sabriya’s Tap/Ballet class dance “Choo Choo Boogie” in their end-of-year performance.
Anya’s soccer team competes in their last game of the spring season, winning 3-1. Anya says she’s less interested in soccer than she used to be. She started soccer five years ago, when she was just five years old, and has been with her current team for three years. Her coach, Anne, is ready to take a break as well, so the team will disband in any event. Anya’s currently thinking she won’t play soccer when it starts up again in the fall, but will probably do more rock climbing instead. (In photo, from left: Anya, Sophie, Chloe, Karin, Lauren, Allesandra, Elizabeth, ??)
Bree’s last day at Learning Tree Montessori Preschool. Her school year official ended a week ago, but she’s had an extra week of “summer care” at the school. For the last day, everyone comes in costume. As always, Bree brings along her special Lambie. Her preschool’s official graduation party will come at the end of the summer.
If a flash mob gathered to do a surprise dance number in an urban plaza, but the plaza was completely deserted because it’s pouring rain — did the flash mob really happen? Anya and Liya are doing a one-week Spanish camp at school, and the school’s various camp teachers have conspired to organize a flash mob dance in Fremont. The weather doesn’t cooperate, however, so the crowd of people casually milling around the plaza is comprised entirely of parents and siblings. The kids still do a serviceable job dancing to Jack Johnson’s “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”.
Anya (in pale blue and green sport sandals) enjoys the opportunity to construct impromptu raingear from plastic bags.
Anya and Liya play in the grassy median that runs down the middle of the boulevard across from Mount Baker Park Presbyterian Church. Church member Chuck snaps this picture of Anya working on a daisy chain.
Anya, inspired by Bree’s cello lessons, has asked to take cello lessons this summer. Angela watches Anya practicing, and it’s obvious Anya is concentrating really hard.
When Anya was a toddler, whenever she was thinking very hard, she would put the tip of her tongue between her teeth and, with her lips closed, sort of suck on the tip of her tongue. She doesn’t do this much anymore, but she does do it when she’s concentrating very hard on something — like getting the hang of the cello.
It’s time for Wheel! Of! Chores!
After dinner each night, we ask the girls to help with various evening chores. For the last year or so, we’ve used “Chore Chopsticks”: a set of chopsticks sticking out of an opaque bottle. The girls each drew a chopstick out of the bottle to read the chore written at the end of the stick, which told them which chore they needed to do that evening. But the girls recently have been complaining because each girl is convinced that their lucky sisters always get the “good” chores. We’ve now created a little chore wheel. Each evening, the first girl who’s finished their dinner gets to give the wheel a quarter-turn and see who’s doing what that evening.